Review Summary:

During the last couple of years, minimalist text editors became increasingly popular. Once the Mac App Store opened for business, one of the first applications of this kind, which achieved big success was iA Writer, which could be still purchased for only $1.

I was very hesitant towards these text editors and I’ve thought that they can’t possibly replace well-known applications like Apple’s Pages and Microsoft’s Word. As a writer, and someone how tends to produce a certain number of articles throughout the week, I use these applications as my main tool of work. Once I tried iA Writer and really started using Markdown syntax and the hidden features which could be easily explored, I realized just why these minimalist applications are so popular.

In case you haven’t used any of these types of text editors, I would say that you need to spend some time learning Markdown and MultiMarkdown, as well as HTML commands and similar codes. They are all used to properly format the text you’re writing, and once you’ve learned a few tricks, I promise that you won’t even think about going back to Pages or Word. That said, I bring you today another interesting text editor, simply named Texts.

Once you open Texts for the first time, you might think that this is just another much stripped text editor, but the truth is that its power lies beneath its surface. Interface is as minimalistic as it gets, and you can only see a text input and a small system toolbar which brings full-screen mode and those three OS X buttons for window control. This app uses all of the latest OS X features like built-in full screen mode, duplicating and versions control.

Even though you won’t see formatting and editing toolbars, all those tools that you would normally associate with these toolbars are hidden as a keyboard shortcuts. Of course, you will need to use Markdown to format the text, and some basic HTML, just to begin with. In terms of entering, editing, and formatting the text, Texts is very similar to any advanced minimalistic editor.

Once I started experimenting with some a bit more advanced features, I was very pleasantly surprised with Texts. First, it works perfectly with any other text editor, and effortlessly converts and imports all kinds of text files. In terms of exporting, you can simply save a file as a RTF file, Pages, Word, PDF and such. All your Markdown and HTML will be automatically converted into end-result, and my exported documents had no problems. I also had no problems with importing, even with some advanced formatting, inserted pictures and mathematical formulas. This is something that Texts set apart from other similar editors.

You can download Texts from its official website for $15, which is its current discounted price, and you can also try it for free.

Our team of writers have broad backgrounds and varied interests but there’s one thing we all have in common: we’re completely and utterly enchanted, head-over-heels-crazy-in-love with the Mac and wider Apple product line. It is sharing this passion with you since 1995 that puts a spring in our step each and every day.

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MacReview got its start back in early 1995 – an era in which the primitive state of the web could comfortably induce severe shock and withdrawals in most of our readers today! Nevertheless undeterred by the primacy of this mysterious new terrain we set about creating an independent, pioneering publication, known then as an “eZine”, dedicated to the Mac we know and love.

At the time nobody could have predicted the influence the web would go on to exert in the 21st century. But then the same could be said of the Mac, and the many new additions to the Apple product line that have followed.